"Mr Blair is making the rounds of all the chancelleries to be president of the council," Daniel Cohn-Bendit said at the assembly in Strasbourg.

His remarks came as he complained about the fascination of EU officials with personalities, with the parliament set to endorse Wednesday Jose Manuel Barroso as European Commission president for a second five-year term.

"It's problems of personnel that preoccupy people at the moment," Cohn-Bendit said, instead of focusing on the Copenhagen climate summit in December or the upcoming meeting in the United States of G20 powers.

Nations currently preside over the 27-nation EU, holding a rotating presidency for six months at a time, but under the new Lisbon reform treaty, which could enter into force next year, a single president will be chosen.

The post will have a two-and-a-half-year term which can be renewed once.

Since leaving Downing Street in June 2007, Blair has been special envoy for the Middle East diplomatic quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and United States, in talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

He has also worked with a non-profit climate group to try to push for a new international agreement in Denmark in December to combat global warming.

In July, a British minister fuelled speculation that Blair was London's candidate for the future EU post, but his spokesman denied he was campaigning for the job, for which former Spanish premier Felipe Gonzalez has also been mentioned.

But a spokesman for Blair said at the time: "There is no campaign. As we have said time and again on this, there is nothing to be a candidate for since the job doesn't actually exist."

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